Empty Cradle
by oddsbobs
Summary: Sirius babysits Harry one evening in 1980, and the memory haunts him later in life. implied SiriusRemus


Disclaimer: Not mine, never was. All JKR's.  
Notes: This was written for The Quidditch Pitch's August 06 Challenge. The prompt was: "James and Lily give Harry to Remus and Sirius to babysit." That begs for fluffy goodness, right? Well, somehow the angst got a hold of me...  
Warning: This contains implied SLASH, which means a male/male relationship. 

They had been preparing for this moment for several weeks. Remus had read every book on childcare available, and Sirius had been relentless in following Lily like a possessed toddler, questioning every move she made. The date had been set over a month in advance—James insisted on doing something extravagant for their anniversary that year, and it was a miracle he could get a table at the _Tourtereaux _in Diagon Alley. Nevertheless, when Remus and Sirius found themselves alone in their apartment with Harry, they could only feel an overwhelming sense of panic.

Sirius was sitting on the overstuffed teal couch with his feet propped up on the edge of the coffee table. He sat Harry against his thighs and commenced in a staring contest with the two-month-old. Well, Sirius was staring. Harry seemed a bit dazed and his head wobbled about as he looked around.

"We'll be fine." Remus said from the kitchen with more confidence than he actually felt. "It's only for a few hours."

"Right. And we know what to do." Sirius replied.

"Definitely."

"We just have to keep him fed, clean, and happy." He frowned. "Does he look happy?" he asked uncertainly.

Remus walked over from cleaning up their dinner dishes to peer at the baby. "I guess so. He's a bit cross-eyed. That's normal, right?"

"He wasn't until you stuck your nose in his face."

"Twat." Remus sat next to Sirius and crossed his own eyes. Harry just looked at him. When Remus stuck his tongue out, however, he was rewarded with a gurgle and smile. "Well I guess he likes that."

Sirius tried it. Harry smiled some more. "Good. For a moment there I thought he was…" He wasn't able to complete his thought because Harry's grin suddenly scrunched up into the most disturbing wailing.

Remus stood up and hastily moved back a few steps. Sirius lifted Harry off of his legs and held him at arm's length. "Oh Merlin, oh Merlin," he cried, "I broke the baby!"

"Nonsense. He's just hungry… or something." The werewolf's face didn't reflect his words, however, and he stared at Sirius in terror. The cries became louder and shriller. "My God, what is that noise? Nothing that small can be that loud."

"He can't be hungry, Moony! Lily said she fed him before they came here." He awkwardly held Harry against his left shoulder and patted his back. "Oh, it's getting worse."

Remus leaned forward, wringing his hands together. "So he's not hungry. And he doesn't want attention… he already has it. That leaves…"

"No," Sirius cut him off. "No, no, no."

"Yes, I believe so."

"Then you do it."

"Why should I? You're his godfather."

"True, but you have a higher tolerance for pain. Werewolf, you know."

Remus grimaced, picked Harry up, and held him at a distance, examining the baby like he did a particularly smelly sock. "I'll wipe. But you have to throw it away."

"Deal." They ran to the makeshift nursery with the determined faces of soldiers making a final stand against the enemy.

The problem had been taken care of ("Uhg! How can something so small create that much shi—" "Padfoot!") and relative peace restored to the apartment. Sirius was by the crib, cradling Harry against his shoulder again and swaying in an attempt to get him to sleep. Remus watched from the doorway.

"Is something bothering you, Padfoot?"

Sirius looked up. "What? No."

Remus walked into the room and looked closely at Sirius's face. Sirius had been in deep thought for several minutes, which was definitely concerning, and his eyes still had a confused daze. He only looked like this when he was thinking about his brother. "Something's wrong. It doesn't have to do with Regulus, does it?"

"I… no. Not really."

"Well, then. What is it?"

"It's just… when I left that place, I made a promise to myself. I told myself I wouldn't get tied down to anyone again." He shifted his weight and adjusted his hold on Harry. "I loved them. I still do, I think. But it hurt so much to see them wasting away or following foolish ideas, it hurt to see them turn their backs on me when I never thought I'd turn my back on them. And then I did it. I left. I turned my back."

Remus lay a hand on his arm, but said nothing.

Sirius finally looked at him. "I made a promise. I thought you and James and Peter were different, and I had nothing to worry about. You could take care of yourselves and you all loved me. But now here I am, a few years later, promising my life to this baby. Putting myself in that position again. What if I mess it up? What if he doesn't like me?"

"Sirius—" Remus whispered.

"That's not all. I made another promise to you. A different one. One that I can't break—I _never _want to break. I've gone and tied myself down, when I told myself I wouldn't. And this," he waved his hand to indicate Harry and Remus, "is more important and real than anything I had before. I'm afraid it'll destroy me if anything happens to this like it did to my family."

"Nothing will happen, Sirius. Padfoot." Remus kissed his temple and wrapped his arm around his waist, laying his other hand over Sirius's on Harry's back. "You'll be an excellent godfather. And you'll be strong enough to get through anything because we'll be right there next to you."

Sirius smiled and breathed in the warmth of the family surrounding him.

* * *

It wasn't the cold that caused his bones to ache.

Sometimes, when They came by his cell, the air became sharper, more intense. It couldn't get much colder, but They were able to make it clearer. And understanding, knowing, _seeing_ things through Their forced perspective could freeze his heart. They never showed lies or made him remember false nightmares. It was all truth. It was truth stripped of emotions, until he could see what was real. He could see how much he hurt everyone. How it was his fault, really.

Memories of Good Times—don't think, don't remember them—were not quite how he thought they were if brought up by Them. Did he truly have that love from his friends? He could not feel any warmth in those memories. Some part of him knew he should, but it wasn't there, so he began to doubt if it ever was. There was less confusion in the memories of the family Before, so he began to wonder if that was what was real, not the family of After, the family he'd chose. (They didn't choose him, he can see that now. He forced himself on them, then ruined them.)

Even the Bad Things were stripped bare. Anger, guilt, sorrow—without those, the Bad Things were infinitely worse. He could see that he killed James and Lily without grief clouding his memory of Godric's Hollow. He could see that he had deeply wounded Remus when they fought without anger to give reason to his words. It was given to him by Them in simple, untarnished truth—_You did this_ and _you did this_ and _what did you do to your promises_?

They liked the Bad Things the best.

But sometimes, sometimes when They were far away and he had ten human fingers and two human hands he could grasp at wisps of feelings (he remembered, once, briefly, that human hands were good for some things as dog paws were good for Moon and Moony, and hands could feel and touch and _not break _things… but They came and he forgot and could not remember _why_, and the Moon was indifferent). He could remember at those times that there was a truth deeper and more eternal than the ones They showed him. There was the need to protect and the idea of being loved.

He curled up on his side as tightly as he could, trying to ignore the pressing weight of emptiness on his left shoulder, trying to ignore the sting of faded warmth across his stomach. He could remember the events, the who's and when's. But not the why's or how's. _You'll be an excellent godfather._

It wasn't the cold that made his bones ache. It was the remembering.

* * *

Remus woke alone in the bed. It had been happening frequently in the last few months, ever since they had moved into Grimmauld. At first he thought it was just an anxious energy at being back at the childhood home, but he was beginning to suspect differently. Talking to Sirius about it during the day was getting nowhere. It was time to follow him into the shadows of the night.

Remus found him standing at the window in the drawing room, staring out into the bleak and empty streets. He was humming brokenly and had a strange lumpy pillow cradled against his left shoulder, one arm supporting it from beneath, the other hand rubbing and patting it. Bleary moonlight drifted through the dirty windowpanes and distorted the edges of the slowly swaying figure.

"Sirius?" Remus whispered. After receiving no reply, he walked cautiously across the faded emerald carpet, careful to keep the floorboards from creaking and splintering the quiet atmosphere. He placed a hand on Sirius's right shoulder. His stomach dropped when he felt Sirius flinch at the touch.

As Sirius turned to him, Remus inhaled sharply. Tears marked his cheeks and his eyes were so unfocused and _lost_. "Moony?" he choked out.

Remus gently pulled Sirius's hand away and squeezed it before lifting the pillow from his unresisting hold. He was able to see that the lumpy object was not a pillow, but a worn, brown teddy bear, misshapen from years as a child's beloved friend followed by years of neglect. It had been charmed to a slightly heftier weight.

"Sirius," Remus sighed. He lay the bear aside and placed a hand on the other man's cheek. "That isn't Harry, love."

Sirius nodded shakily, his eyebrows furrowed together.

"Harry's all grown up. He's at Hogwarts now."

Sirius began to nod once more, but his face became twisted with grief. He shook his head a few times, and then he was crying again. Suddenly Remus knew, understood with a certainty that shook his heart, that Sirius was still stuck in the nether-world between past and present. His mind clearly remembered the years before Azkaban, but everything since must have been like a dream—a nightmare that would not end.

"I promised. I told James I'd protect the baby. I swore…" he sobbed. "And I try. But sometimes it just hurts to breathe…"

Remus drew Sirius into a fierce hug, cradling his head to his shoulder and whispering soothing words in his ear. These were nighttime demons that he was unsure how to banish. The simple act of touching, of wrapping him in a warm embrace, seemed to ease away the lingering grasp of the Dementors. Sirius's sobbing faded until he stood still within Remus's hold. He hoped that Azkaban did not reach so deeply in Sirius's mind that it could never be fixed.

It was a calm and collected Sirius that he led back to their room and into bed. His eyes were clearer, but more haunted and desperate—an unfathomable pain sharpened by reality. He realized it must be easier for Sirius to become lost in the past and remember Harry in the teddy bear, to reach out for echoes of James in Harry, than to face every day as a reminder of betrayal, fear, and guilt. Sirius knew the past was lost, but the present seemed so empty.

There was not much that Remus could sort out—most of it was up to Sirius. All that he could do was help Sirius remember what it was like to be warm.


End file.
